The water cooler appeared. There was no one beyond it.
Using the door as a rudimentary shield, Abbie continued to push with the shoulder, sweeping her gun in an arc past the area to the right, beyond the cooler, until she was aiming down the barrel of the corridor. Towards Davesh's office. At that point, the door-shield would move no more.
Davesh's door remained open. Three others had joined it, including the one behind which Abbie and Christine had hidden.
When Baldie first spotted Christine and Abbie and alerted his team to their presence, Smoker and crew would not have known with whom they were dealing. Smoker probably thought Baldie and the woman could handle it.
Then they would have heard the swinging stool and Baldie's scream. Would have known they weren't dealing only with runners but with fighters.
Then the gunshot.
While the now-dead woman covered the stairs, the remaining duo would have checked the windows in Davesh's office and learned there was no easy way to the lot via them. So what next? They'd have come into the hall and burst through the next door they reached, then the next, then the next.
That they hadn't reached the fourth and final door suggested they'd found a way to the lot within room three. Which meant that was where Abbie needed to be.
Her shoulder remained against the door. Now she twisted, placed the tip of her boot against the wood and shifted back.
Removing her shoulder, Abbie extended her leg and pointed her gun towards the door. All this, she tried to do in silence. She doubted there was anyone upstairs. If there was, they would likely be in the room Abbie believed was the last they had searched for an escape route.
Gun outstretched, Abbie whipped back her toe, stepped to the side of the water cooler, and prepared to fire.
The door swung closed.
There was no one behind it.
Abbie swivelled back towards the corridor, gun still raised. She came to where the hall narrowed, proceeded past the unopened door on the left, stopped before the first opened door on the right.
She'd been correct. Beyond the open door, Abbie could hear the rustle of the curtains as the wind flowed into the room and pushed gently against them. She moved away from one wall and stepped towards the other. As she went, she turned until she was aiming her gun into the open room.
There was the window. Wide. Large enough for Abbie, though only just. A man much bigger than her would have had trouble squeezing through, which told her something about the enemy, assuming they'd both escaped the building this way.
Most of the room was to the right of the door. Abbie took a step in that direction to check the small space to the left was clear of enemies, which it was. Then, she rotated back the other way, stepped inside, and swept her gun from one side to the other, checking off the bulk of another office.
Desk, flower pots, filing cabinets, bookshelves. No people. Abbie was alone.
Proceeding to the window, she glanced out at the back of the building, looked left to one corner, right to the other—no one in either direction.
She searched the concentric circles of cars, one after the other, from the back of the building to the gate, seeking the hunched figure of a hiding enemy.
Street lamps from the road beyond the chain-link fence plus the moon above made hiding difficult. It was possible, but Abbie reckoned the bad guys had rounded the corners of the building, moving towards the front, rather than trying to hide amongst the cars. Why bother? They knew no one was guarding the building’s front and expected Abbie and Christine to escape that way. After all, if the two runners had tried to return via the stairs, the window escapees knew they had someone stationed there, ready to eliminate anyone stupid enough to turn back. They might have heard more shots, but they wouldn't know for sure who, if anyone, had been killed.
Abbie could see how the duo had reached the ground.
A drainage pipe ran from the top of the building to a drain in the gravel below. Brackets held it in place. The pipe couldn't be made of glass or steel and thus would have ruined the building's hideous aesthetic if placed at the front. To circumvent this problem, the roof had been built to slant towards the back of the building. The drainage pipe was situated here, out of sight of new arrivals to the dealership. After all, who would want to buy a car from a place that made it obvious they were worried about safe and considered water drainage?
The pipe was designed to carry runoff water from the glass roof to the ground. It was not a fireman's pole. Its installer had not intended it to be used as a ladder from the office to the ground floor.
In descending from the window to the gravel, the duo had placed considerable stress on the pipe. Abbie could see it had been tugged away from the building in several places. At least two of the brackets looked as though they had just resisted popping loose their fittings and separating from the steel girders to which the installer had attached them.
In other words, the pipe had taken two people. Abbie wasn't sure it would take a third.
But she couldn’t go back.
She wasn't that high. She didn't need to get far before she'd be safe to drop to the ground. Besides, she was slim. While she was mostly muscle, and muscle weighed more than fat, she would still likely put far less strain on the pipe than had the duo who went before, at least one of whom was a man.
It was all about speed. Abbie slipped one leg through the window, then the other. She was perched on the sill, half in the office, half out. Twisting from
